Jacob E. Goodman – författare

While we were busy putting together the present collection of articles celebrating the twentieth birthday of our journal, Discrete & Computational Geometry, and, in a way, of the ?eld that has become known under the same name, two more years have elapsed. There is no doubt that DCG has crossed the line between childhood and adulthood. By the mid-1980s it became evident that the solution of many algorithmic qu- tions in the then newly emerging ?eld of computational geometry required classical methodsandresultsfromdiscreteandcombinatorialgeometry. Forinstance,visibility and ray shooting problems arising in computer graphics often reduce to Helly-type questions for line transversals; the complexity (hardness) of a variety of geometric algorithms depends on McMullen’s upper bound theorem on convex polytopes or on the maximum number of “halving lines” determined by 2n points in the plane, that is, the number of different ways a set of points can be cut by a straight line into two parts of the same size; proximity questions stemming from several application areas turn out to be intimately related to Erdos’ ? s classical questions on the distribution of distances determined by n points in the plane or in space. On the other hand, the algorithmic point of view has fertilized several ?elds of c- vexity and of discrete geometry which had lain fallow for some years, and has opened new research directions.

During the past few decades, the gradual merger of Discrete Geometry and the newer discipline of Computational Geometry has provided enormous impetus to mathematicians and computer scientists interested in geometric problems. This 2005 volume, which contains 32 papers on a broad range of topics of interest in the field, is an outgrowth of that synergism. It includes surveys and research articles exploring geometric arrangements, polytopes, packing, covering, discrete convexity, geometric algorithms and their complexity, and the combinatorial complexity of geometric objects, particularly in low dimension. There are points of contact with many applied areas such as mathematical programming, visibility problems, kinetic data structures, and biochemistry, as well as with algebraic topology, geometric probability, real algebraic geometry, and combinatorics.

During the past few decades, the gradual merger of Discrete Geometry and the newer discipline of Computational Geometry has provided enormous impetus to mathematicians and computer scientists interested in geometric problems. This 2005 volume, which contains 32 papers on a broad range of topics of interest in the field, is an outgrowth of that synergism. It includes surveys and research articles exploring geometric arrangements, polytopes, packing, covering, discrete convexity, geometric algorithms and their complexity, and the combinatorial complexity of geometric objects, particularly in low dimension. There are points of contact with many applied areas such as mathematical programming, visibility problems, kinetic data structures, and biochemistry, as well as with algebraic topology, geometric probability, real algebraic geometry, and combinatorics.

The first DIMACS special year, held during 1989-1990, was devoted to discrete and computational geometry. The workshops addressed the following topics: geometric complexity, probabilistic methods in discrete and computational geometry, polytopes and convex sets, arrangements, and algebraic and practical issue in geometric computation. This volume presents results of the workshops and the special year activities. Containing both survey articles and research papers, this collection presents an excellent overview of discrete and computational geometry. The diversity of these papers demonstrate how geometry continues to provide a vital source of ideas in theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics as well as fertile ground for interaction and stimulation between the two disciplines.